Apple computer worth $260K dumped at recycling plant

THE search is on for the mystery woman who dumped a rare machine at a Silicon Valley recycling plant, so she can share in the profits from the sale.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA - JUNE 24: An Apple-1 computer, built in 1976, is displayed during the First Bytes: Iconic Technology From...

AN old Apple computer dumped at a recycling centre in the US has turned out to be a valuable collector’s item worth $261,470.

The recycling plant in Silicon Valley is looking for the woman who dropped off the rare machine.

Victor Gichun, vice president of Clean Bay Area, said she left several boxes of electronics that she had cleaned out from her garage after her husband died a few months earlier.

It wasn’t until a few weeks later that workers at the recycling centre opened the boxes to discover an Apple I computer inside.

“We really couldn’t believe our eyes. We thought it was fake,” Gichun told the NBC.

The machine is one of only about 200 first-generation Apple computers made by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976, in a seminal moment for personal computing.

Gichun sold the computer to a private collection, and wants to split the proceeds with the mystery donor, who drove an SUV.

He told the Mercury News that his own mother had died aged 54, and he remembers how his father suffered, so he thought the money might help the woman in the aftermath of her husband’s death.